A virtual universe (VU) is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its residents to traverse, inhabit, and interact through the use of avatars. Many VUs are represented using 3-D graphics and landscapes, and are populated by many thousands of users, known as “residents.”
VUs have become more complex as processing power, memory storage, and bandwidth have increased. Likewise, opportunities for multi-avatar events such as business meetings, lectures, and social gatherings have increased. Residents or participants in the VUs find that demands on their time are comparable in many ways to time demands in the real world. Thus, a real-world resident who is also a VU resident may find that he or she is obligated to attend to business in the real world which occurs simultaneously with one or more events in the VU. While a person attends to business in the real world, the computing resources of the VU are used unnecessarily to maintain the details of the form and appearance of a user's avatar or another object in the VU. A method is needed to reduce the computing resources required to maintain the avatar or other object while the owner is attending to other business.